In the context of mobile advertising, graphical or text advertising creatives are displayed on a user's mobile handset. The creative is provided by an advertiser (e.g. Coca-Cola®, Toyota®, etc.) and is delivered through an advertising platform owned by a publisher (e.g. Google®, Apple®, AdBrite®, etc.). The creative is rendered on the mobile handset either through a web browser or through a native application.
The desired goal of both the advertiser and the publisher is to have the creative displayed to the user at an opportune time when the user has a high interest in the product or service being advertised. If the user is interested, then he will click on the ad (which is relevant for cost-per-mille, cost-per-click, or cost-per-action advertisement campaigns), or remember the product or service at a later time (which is relevant for branding campaigns).
However, conventional mobile advertising approaches are limited in their ability to determine a user's interest, and target advertisements at optimum times based on their interest. Currently, mobile advertisements are scheduled to be displayed to the user with relevancy determined by a plurality of techniques, including but not limited to: search keywords provided by the user; or search content context, such as from the body of email or webpage text. Thus, in conventional approaches, the user's interest is determined by search keywords provided by the user, or from text read by the user. Geographical information (such as location information derived from cell phone towers or Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates) may be used as an additional factor to limit advertisements to businesses close to the user. For example, in conventional mobile advertising, suppose a user inputs a search query for “restaurants” on their smartphone. In response to the “restaurant query,” the user would receive advertisements for restaurants, which might further be limited geographically to nearby restaurants within a small radius.
However, suppose that a mobile phone user does not input search queries (or receive content related to their interest that can be searched). For this situation, conventional mobile advertising techniques have difficulty in providing advertising creatives based on the actual interests of the user of the smartphone. Even if a user eventually inputs queries, this may occur at a time when a user's interest is not the highest. For example, a user of a mobile device might go out for a run to exercise and have a passionate interest in buying better running shoes during the run, but not perform a search query for some weeks or months later when their interest level is lower. In this situation, the advertising creative might not be received at the optimum time.